Undream the Echoes

Liam
10.16.2001

I have always been a fighter.

Even from my birth I’ve been this way. I know this story well because my mother has told it to me several hundred times: I was a breech baby, up-side-down, or maybe right-side-up if you want to think of it that way. Normally being breech is fine and there should be no major complications, but on my way out, the umbilical cord got wrapped around my neck. The doctors and nurses all panicked – what do they do now? – but in some last minute miracle the umbilical cord loosened and I came kicking and screaming like a little devil. But at least I was a healthy little devil.

Twelve days later I was back in the hospital. My mother was concerned because I had been throwing up my food after every meal. At first the nurse tried to comfort my mom by telling her that spit up is a perfectly normal thing for every infant, but then she saw my projectile vomit splatter on the opposite wall and she rushed to get a doctor because there was no way in hell that that was perfectly normal. Turns out I had Pyloric Stenosis, a condition in which one of my digestive muscles was too tight and wouldn’t allow food to pass into my stomach; with nowhere else to go, the food was forced to back where it came in, and I had been throwing all of it up. I had been alive for twelve days and I was starving to death. Two nurses had to stand behind my mom as the doctor told her the news in case she fainted, because as a new mother they thought that she would keel over and burst into tears over her newborn son’s health. But instead my mom just nodded and said, “So how do we fix it?”

A simple surgery was the answer to this question. To this day I still have a scar on the upper right side of my stomach where they had cut me open and loosened the problematic muscle. (Today this surgery can be done through the belly button with lasers and it results in no scars; technology will never cease to amaze me.) And so I endured and survived the perils of being born with only a small gash on my skin and nothing more.

Was this God’s way of telling me I should not be alive? I managed to survive my birth, so He tried again and attempted to snuff me out with Pyloric Stenosis. If we didn’t have today’s technology on my side, if we had let things take its natural course, I would surely be dead. Darwin says the survival of the fittest is law, and as an infant I was absolutely not the fittest – but I fought against that law, I fought for my life and I won. So suck on that, Lord Almighty.

It’s stories like these that make me wonder if there is a God at all. Maybe there had been, once upon a time, but now, with our newfound wisdom of the world, maybe He’s dead. Maybe we have killed him. We don’t need faith anymore; we have textbooks and teachers and Google to answer the unanswerable questions, like where we came from and how the earth was formed. The Seven Days of Creation and the Great Flood are laughed at now. And with machines and doctors and surgeries, we can fight against the natural cause of things – we save lives that normally could not (should not?) be saved. That’s why the population is booming now. I’m not complaining, oh hell no, because if it weren’t for man’s determination to defeat God’s will then I would not be alive. All I’m saying is that we make our own miracles now. We have become our own gods.

But I still believe in God, I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because it was the way I was raised. I think, however, that I just like having someone to blame when bad things happen to me. I don’t thank Him when good things happen, though. I’m a hypocrite in that way.

Anyway, back to being a fighter. Fighting – and winning – has always been in my nature. And it always will be. As a kid, I was always the one who got sent to the principal’s office. I was always the one to start a fight on a playground or to throw sand into some poor kid’s eyes just to get him mad. I absolutely adored punching the shit out of things, and that goes the same for kicking, biting, or whatever. What can I say, I just loved a challenge – but as a child I didn’t really know what sort of challenges I should look for, so I was simply violent.

By the time high school rolled around I was smart enough to focus my attention to academics. My challenges now revolved around school sports and math league meets. And if you try calling me a nerd for being in math league I can give you all the numbers of my high school girlfriends and have you ask them just how terrific I am in bed. Plus I was a star athlete on the swim team, lacrosse team, and cross country team. So don’t even try.

Since I was viciously determined at winning at everything I participated in (and since I was awfully good at actually doing so) it was no surprise that my teachers recommended that I head straight for a four-year education as soon as I graduated, since for whatever reason everyone today seems to believe that getting a degree is the only sensible way to survive this world. I never understood this when I was young because Mom never went to college and she always seemed okay to me, but whatever. However Mom and my little brother Landon and I had been on our own ever since I could remember and we never really had that much money, and a college tuition was so expensive that I didn’t even dare dreaming out it. But then I came up with the perfect solution: ROTC. They pay my full tuition, and all I have to do is either serve full time in the Army for three years, or serve part time for eight years while pursuing a civilian career. That meant that if I really wanted to take my chances, I could live like a normal person, and the only time I would have to serve is if they really needed me. I chose this option, as a pilot in the Air Force. I got my education in exchange for government servitude – it seemed like a fair trade.

So I graduated. Went to college and got a degree in mechanical engineering. Got a job, got fired, got another job. Went grocery shopping one day and met Elle Crestfield. And you know the story from there.

Three years have passed and I am still living a normal life, no military service, nothing. And then September 11th happens. And the whole ROTC ordeal doesn’t seem so fair anymore.

When I get the letter in the mail, I sink to my knees in the dirt right in front of the mailbox and pray. Really pray. I pray like I haven’t prayed in ten years (which I haven’t). I pray to the God that I’m not sure if I really believe in anymore. I pray that I can stay at home. I pray that I can stay with Elle. I pray that I won’t have to go far away and die in some unknown territory without anyone to say goodbye to me. And while I was at it I pray that my dog who had run away three days ago would finally come home. Might as well ask for that too, right? Please God, please. Just do me this one favor, just this once. I can’t go to war. I have Elle. I can’t go to war. Please.

After reading the letter four times over I decide that it isn’t real. This isn’t happening. It’s just a trick, right? And then I read it again. It seems pretty authentic. Fuck.

I go inside, take my shoes off. Everything seems surreal, dreamlike. I throw my coat in the closet, aiming for the hook on the door and miss. Don’t bother picking it up off the floor. Walk into the kitchen, Elle is there. She smiles.

“The paper came today, right?” she asks and I nod, handing her the newspaper. She always likes to read it first – well, she never really reads it, she just flips to the back and does the crossword puzzles. She has never really cared about the news all too much. She expects that I will fill her in if any catastrophic events occur, and if nothing important happens then she just doesn’t give a damn about the rest of the world.

I sit in the chair by the fireplace, just staring at nothing. Elle is too preoccupied to notice that I’m acting like a total fucking zombie, but finally she does, and when she looks up at me there is concern etched into the premature wrinkles around her eyes and in the middle of her eyebrows. “What’s wrong?” she asks, and I just hold out an arm and she obediently comes over to me and sits in my lap. I cradle her body against mine, wrapping both arms around her securely, fastening herself to me and refusing to let go. I don’t say anything for a while and neither does she. She just nestles her nose in the crook of my neck and runs her delicate fingers through my hair, something that usually calms my senses but not today.

“Is there anything you want to talk about?” she asks in a soft murmur, so soft that I wouldn’t have heard it if I didn’t feel the vibrations of her voice on my skin. An emotion warms my insides and I hold Elle closer to me. It’s funny how she doesn’t give a shit about anything but she always manages to be there for me when something goes wrong. That’s why I love her so much. “Liam, really, you can’t keep giving me this silent treatment. Did I do anything? What happened?”

Finally, after taking a deep breath and summoning all the courage I have left in me, I blurt out, “I’m being deported.”

She slaps me across the cheek. Hard. “No,” she says and by the look on her face it seems like she’s saying, Stop lying, you idiot. I’m not letting you go anywhere anyway. “No,” she says again. “No.” Now she has tears in her eyes, because I haven’t said anything else, I’ve just stared at her with a look that’s hard and cold and she knows I’m telling the truth.

She wraps her arms around my neck and I bury my face in her hair. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

I know I shouldn’t be afraid. I’m perfectly fit and I’ve completed all my training and I am prepared for war. I am a fighter; I know I can fend for myself. But it’s Elle I’m scared for. I’m not sure how strong of a fighter she can be. If I come home in a casket…then what? Then what?

“When?” she asks.

“What?”

“When do you leave?”

“Two weeks.”

She slaps me again and then kisses me, her tears streaming down my cheeks as our skin makes contact. Then she pulls away and stares at me for a long time. “You better not die, you stupid asshole,” she whispers.